Babbling about books and plants.

Seed Inventory 2012

About a year ago, I carefully organized my seed drawer and was determined to keep it that way. And then I started to pull seed packets out and toss them back in, and rubber bands snapped so the neat little bundles of similar seeds fell apart, and I bought more seeds and tossed them into the drawer as well, and so it was a complete mess again. So this week, I dumped it all out again and organized it again, in the hope that the order will last longer this time.

54 bags of seeds. That’s a little less than last year, but still an awful lot for my little balcony garden!

Winter purslane, Claytonia perfoliata (Austrosaat) (But the picture on the seed packet is of common purslane, Portulaca oleracea. Looks like someone was confused by the similar names, but this should seriously not happen. You’d think professionals would know to pay attention to botanical names! Well, I’ll see what it turns out to be.)

Edit 2012/02/25:

Rocket, Eruca sativa

Rocket, Rucola selvatica, Diplotaxis tenuifolia (?)

Morning Glories

Ipomoea purpurea:

‘Light Blue Star’ (Thompson & Morgan)

‘Kniola’s Black Knight’(Thompson & Morgan)

‘Carnevale di Venezia’ (Thompson & Morgan)

‘Morning Star’ (Sperli)‘Sunrise Serenade’ (Kiepenkerl)

‘Milky Way’ (Austrosaat)

‘Star of Yelta’ (Reinsaat

I. tricolor ‘Blauer Himmel’ (Austrosaat)

I. alba ‘Moonlight (Austrosaat)

I. lobata ‘Exotic Love’

Damn. Looks like I’m out ofI. sloteri. It’s kind of hard to find, and anyway looking at seeds is risky. So difficult to resist the dark blueConvolvulus tricolor, but I shouldn’t buy any more flowers. Yes, I’m aware that this means I shouldn’t buyIpomoea sloteri either, but I’m willing to make an exception for climbers. Yes, even though I was planning to grow fewer morning glories this year, so they don’t choke the beans and melons again. At least, I’ll put the morning glories in separate pots this year – when they shared the veggie planters, they were too well fed and grew lots of gigantic leaves and few flowers.

Lotus, Nelumbo nucifera (picked out of the seedpods we use for the All Saints’ Day arrangements at work)

Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris (self-saved, from “my” old garden)

summer flower mix (freebie from the horticulture school alumni society)

poppy mix (meant for guerrilla gardening and never used up)

Last year, I found links for every one of those seeds, and put them in alphabetical order, but I’m too lazy for that this year. It was enough work to write this post in English and in German, for my new-ish German balcony gardening blog (there doesn’t seem to be a single German blog about this topic, so I started one myself.)

I’m willing to share most of these seeds, but only within Europe – overseas postage is too expensive, and anyway I can’t legally send seeds to the US at least (I don’t know about other countries). No big/heavy seeds, though (beans, peas, nasturtiums), and of some of the tomatoes I don’t have enough seeds to share (yet. I plan to save seeds this year.)